


Objects at Rest: An Expanse micro-fic

by AlexiusSawall



Series: The Armstrong Chronicles [1]
Category: The Expanse (TV), The Expanse Series - James S. A. Corey
Genre: Crew as Family, F/F, Gen, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-24
Updated: 2018-07-24
Packaged: 2019-06-15 13:43:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15414216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlexiusSawall/pseuds/AlexiusSawall
Summary: The crew of the freighter Armstrong is docked at a Belter station, relaxing... except their Captain is late. And wanted by half the population of the outer solar system...





	Objects at Rest: An Expanse micro-fic

**Author's Note:**

> A little while back some friends and I were chatting on Facebook about the new Expanse RPG that's coming out this year. We're all fans of the show and books, and before you knew it, I'd kinda accidentally recruited people onto my fictional ship; or they volunteered, and who am I to say. And then I had an idea about a little story, and then... there was this.

Something was buzzing.   
  
David Halliday smiled, at first, then realised that he was alone, and that he wasn’t even in his own bunk. In fact, he wasn’t in a bunk.

Halliday opened his eyes, and regretted the move. He clamped them shut again, but the damage was done, and painful light wormed its way into his skull no matter what gambits he tried. Curling into a ball; swearing loudly and profusely; prayer, in whatever scraps of dogma he’d picked up in twenty years in space.

It was, he realised, useless.

“Fuck. Shut it off!”

The buzzing got louder, reaching a level like a swarm of Earther bugs eating away at his brain.

“Fuck,” he said… “Stop the alarm!”

It grew louder again, and then a new sound emerged, a carefully modulated, genderless voice that sounded like it was conjured out of the air.   
  
“I am afraid I cannot -”   
  
“SHUT UP!”

The buzzing and the voice stopped. Halliday lay back, almost relaxed, and remembered the lost thought from moments before. He fumbled in a pocket - are they my pants, he thought? A jacket? Oh! A vest! - and found his terminal.

“Okay. Time?”

“Eight AM station time,” said the voice. Something like reality started to assert itself.

“Shit,” he said. “And, uh…” The voice was insistent.

“You set this alarm 27 hours ago,” it said, “And this is this terminal’s second attempt to wake you.”

“Oh well fuck, why didn’t you just say so!”

Halliday sighed. The silence from the terminal was not only deafening, he thought, but remarkably judgemental. He looked around, taking in the dim lighting, dark walls, and a dozen very passed out belters.

"Where the fuck am I?"

* * *

Something was buzzing.

Simon Merimer noted it, but it was just part of a greater background hum. 

Belter dialect washed over the speakers on the flight deck, mixed in with the pulsing rhythm of some bangra tunes he recognised from… That last trip to Eros? Ceres? Some… other… place?

He grinned. The beautiful thing about being an ex-combat - emphasis on the first syllable - pilot was that you could pretty much lay back in your crash couch and not think about where and when and why, and instead focus in on the really important stuff. 

“Oh yeah,” he muttered, “Rotate left, 20 degrees.”

He could have typed, but his hands were full. A twist there, pressure on that, then apply some torque. Merimer felt something give way between his fingers, and he sighed - sound and touch melting into one. He smiled, and lay back, something like satisfaction washing over him. On the screen, the live display of the repair mechs going over the main drive showed a clean board. 

The buzzing got louder. 

Merimer sat up, put the freshly field-stripped pistol away, killed the music and opened ship-band feed. 

“What is it, baby?”

“The captain is overdue,” said a machine voice.

“Ah, fuck,” he said. “Okay, patch me into engineering.”

* * *

 

Something was buzzing.

There were gasps as well. One set of sounds rasping, caught in the back of the throat, a sound like something trying to escape; the other was more based on exertion, a rhythmic, almost athletic breathing… 

Two sets of breathy sounds, two bodies heaving against in each other in the light spin gravity of the dock. Each movement sent them clear of the deck and the soft blanket and cushions spread about in passionate haste. Sweat flying in graceful arcs, not so much dripping as spraying, the sounds mounting, the first gasps now coming closer, closer to release, hair - short and black, and long and red, whipping in the low grav - the second set growing more determined, and…

Something was buzzing. On top of the *other* buzzing.

Elissa Hardy looked up, her motion faltering. A red light flashed on a comm-panel, a buzzing tone accompanying it in tandem. Blink-BUZZ. Blink-BUZZ. Blink-Bu…

“Oh fucking shut it off al-fucking-ready.”

The other woman’s panting grew urgent, plaintive, and then quiet. She looked up at Hardy, but Hardy’s attention was elsewhere.

“I told you, Simon, not,” she bit out, “to fucking… interrupt… these… repairs.”

A voice crackled over the comm-panel.

“Cap’s late.”

“Well fuck,” Hardy said. She looked down at her companion, and shrugged with her hands, Belter-style. The kind of motion that would show through even in a bulky, badly-patched vac-suit. “Sorry Claire. Business.”   
  
“My name’s Suzan.”

“Oh,” Hardy said. “Yeah, of course. You gotta fuck off, Susan.” She smiled, and reached for her flight suit. “‘Cause pretty soon I’m gonna have to kill someone.”

* * *

 

Something was buzzing.

No one else could hear it, but it was a deep, warming, pleasing hum in Vee Patterson’s chest. It was both a wave and a particle, moving in tandem with her and the universe, and every other person in the cheap dock-side casino.

Only, she thought, they didn’t know it yet. These mooks had no idea they were about to get taken for…

“Your coat, kopeng.”   
  
Patterson looked up from the table, eyes squinting against the smoke and fumes of a wide variety of intoxicants. “Huh?”

“To pochuye ke? To deaf?”

Patterson frowned, then suddenly felt her comm and its insistent call reminder. She’d set it to vibrate and then forgotten all about it. 

“Uh, yeah,” she said. “Kowlting im gut, beratna.” Patterson dug out her comm, shielded it with one hand like a guilty school-child, and activated it.

“I told you, you Earther thug,” she said, “not to interru…”

“Yeah, well,” Merimer said, letting his Australian accent get a little thicker, “Old Mate ain’t back at the ship, and you know what that means.”

“I’m working.”

“You’re gambling,” Merimer said. “I can practically smell the cheap booze and desperation from here. Look, Cap’s late, and you know…”

“Fuck,” Patterson said. “I know. See you at the ‘lock.” She turned back to the stick thin belter across the table. “Let’s say we toss a coin for what’s in the pot, koyo?”

“Pashang fong, coyo!”

“Yeah, well, fuck you too."

* * *

 

The outer hatch was open, leading back into the welcoming dim light of the tramp freighter Armstrong’s interior.  When Patterson got there, Merimer was leaning against the main bulkhead, in an animated conversation with the Armstrong’s engineer.

“Dude, you have no fucking idea,” Hardy said.   
  
“The woman from the rec-deck? Brunette?”   
  
“No - black hair, patchy buzzcut.”   
  
“Oh!” Merimer said. “Claire. Yeah, sorry ‘bout that.”

“Susan, apparently, but she was…” 

Patterson cleared her throat, and planted her hands on her hips. Behind her, foot traffic tramped up and down the main docking corridor, and underneath her feet the stars spun lazily through a thick section of cloudily transparent decking.

“I leave the ship to make us some credits and _you_ turn it into a brothel.”   
  
Hardy turned around, and flashed a smile. “No, no, this wasn’t a transaction it was true…”   
  
“Lust,” Merimer said. “Pure as the driven snow, you are.”

“I’ve never seen snow.”

“Seen the cooling plant fritz out and fuck up the plumbing?”

“Yeah?”

“You’ve seen snow. Anyway, Cap’s…”   
  
“Late,” said Patterson and Hardy in unison.

“Is it the OPA?” Hardy asked.   
  
“Could be,” said Merimer. “After that gig on Titan they have reason enough to want to space him.”

“Or it’s the Loca Griega,” Patterson offered.

“I think they hate all of us pretty equally,” Hardy said.   
  
“Yeah, true, but the Captain is…”   
  
“A pretty easy fucking target, you’re right.” Merimer sighed. “Okay, I’ve got two pistols, an assault shotgun, and that Martian flechette cannon we picked up the last time we swung by Phobos.”   
  
“Fuck I miss that place,” Hardy said. “I’ll take the cannon.”

“Thought so,” Merimer said, and he hefted an unwieldy collection of barrels, braces, and ammunition feeds from behind the bulkhead he was leaning against. “Vee?”

“Pistol?”   
  
“Got it,” he said, and handed over a snub-nosed, 20-shot semi-automatic. “Which means…” He twisted, and the shotgun slung at his back came into view, a wide-barrelled, auto-loading corridor-sweeper.   
  
“You really love that thing,” Hardy said.   
  
“You fucking know it.”   
  
Footsteps sounded at the end of the docking tube, and all three spun to face the sound, weapons leveled.

“Uh, guys?”

David Halliday stood there, swaying slightly. His ship-suit was tied about his waist, the knees stained by… something, and his undershirt showing what looked suspiciously like a flop-sweat.    
  
“Did someone try and rob the ship?” he asked, and then walked through his crew. As he passed Hardy, he pushed aside the barrel of the giant flechette gun, staggered a little, then recovered. “I’ll get my rifle, and we’ll go fuck ‘em up. Fuckers.” 

He disappeared into the ship.   
  
“I’m gonna kill him,” Hardy said.

“Get in line,” said Patterson.   
  
Merimer looked between the two women. “I’ll, uh…”

“Be out of our way?” said Hardy.

“Yup.”

“Good call.”

"Sure thing."


End file.
